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I’m sorry. I have to put all my organs back in order.

Grief of the girlhood everyone talks about put my lungs where my liver should be.

Jealousy of the life everyone else got to live knotted my intestines around my spine.

My kidneys started to sulk again.

They always did crawl into my hips after an argument with my parents.

At fourteen, my heart migrated into my throat so fast that I choked whenever you walked into the room.

By twenty-three, it lived permanently so far behind my tongue

That anyone who dared try to feed the damn thing got lost

And gave up halfway through.

Fourteen. You asked me what my name was,

But my uterus started shedding itself so quickly,

I forgot to ask you yours.

Fifteen. My friends asked me to go to the movies.

You would be there with another girl.

I responded, “Go without me.”

Holding the pancreas that refused to digest that.

Sixteen. My mother held my nose between two fingers like wet clay

And asked the doctor if he could make me easier to love.

Seventeen. I couldn’t find my best friend at her house.

She’d already left in your passenger seat without saying a word.

And I learned that the stomach could digest almost anything except abandonment.

Eighteen. I spent entire lectures trying to keep my spine straight.

The curvature of my neck straightened out.

Now it takes a little longer for me to swallow.

Nineteen. Whatever organ controls the thing where I don’t throw up

Finally gave out in the backseat of somebody else’s car.

Everyone folded into each other during a cold road trip like fresh laundry into a cuddle pile

I learned how to make my body smaller that night.

Shuffling the organs around came in handy for this.

Twenty. My liver got tired of filtering out poison.

My insides stopped introducing themselves to new people entirely.

It was easier that way.

Twenty-one. My friends left one by one so quietly

I only noticed because my body became easier to carry.

Twenty-two. I mastered the art of putting myself back together before anyone noticed.

Heart behind tongue.

Lungs beneath ribs.

Intestines untangled from the spine.

Smile, stretched, and stitched carefully over everything else.

I almost believed it myself.

Twenty-three. You came back asking for my friendship

Like it was something small enough to fit in your hands,

But didn’t see the part where I spent three hours reorganizing entrails across my kitchen floor.

You walked in on me.

Nobody had ever stayed long enough to see this part before.

You watched me hold my heart in both hands

Like something recovered from a house fire.

You asked me why I kept apologizing for the mess.

I wanted to tell you I wasn’t finished.

Come back later.

Eventually, I would become something easier to keep.

Something with a body that did not recoil at your touch like a wounded deer.

Instead, I handed you my heart,

The anxious ticker,

As casually as the set of car keys I kept losing,

and said, “Here.

Just until I remember where it goes.”